paulraphael

I don't believe you need any kind of special permit for an immersion circulator. The big kerfuffle over sous vide in NYC years ago led to a rule that you needed to file a HACCP plan if you had a chamber vacuum machine in your restaurant. That was the machine that freaked out the (under-educated) health dept. officials. But the circulator's fine, unless the rules have changed in recent years. Pastrygirl's question may come up—will the health dept. accept that your eggs are actually pasteurized? They should—they're fine with things getting pasteurized through conventional cooking methods. But I wouldn't count on them being rational. FWIW, I got my NYC health dept. food protection certificate in 2008, and there was no mention of sous-vide anything in the study materials or in the test.

The question is if there's really a way to keep volatile aroma compounds from behaving like volatile aroma compounds. It's their stock in trade to evaporate quickly. This is not only why they disappear in the oven, but why they have such intensity of flavor and aroma in the first place. If there IS a way to contain the aromatics—say, by extracting them into oil instead of alcohol, and solidifying the oil, is there any way this won't mute the flavor release? And what's worse ... having most of the aroma compounds vanish, or having them remain, but sequestered and muted? As Chromedome suggests, we'd have to test it. And for something that's likely to be this subtle, I'd be skeptical of anything short of a blind triangle test with at least a few tasters. You'd need to start on an even field—a good quality extract vs. a good quality powder. And you'd need to account for the biggest variable, which is concentration. There's no way to know what counts as an equivalent quantity of each, so ideally you'd make a few samples with each kind of vanilla, ranging from too little to too much.

silicon dioxide is also the main ingredient in beaches and sand castles (!)

I'm imagining some kind of sculptural presentation made from some kind of fluid-gel capellini. But not sure I want to eat it.

Maltodextrin is technically sugar. It just isn't sweet. But it breaks down in your body to glucose so quickly that it has roughly the same glycemic index as glucose. Maltodextrins are sometimes used as bulking agents, because they have a neutral flavor and aren't hygroscopic. More interestingly, some forms of them are used to solidify fats. If you've ever wondered how they got vegetable oil into powdered cake mix, the answer is tapioca maltodextrin. A version marketed for this purpose is called N-Zorbit. It's possible that the maltodextrin just acts as a bulking agent in the vanilla powder; it's also possible that the extract itself was oil-based, and the maltodextrin was used to solidify it.

I do what Anna does, but often just use hot water from the tap. Ours is about 130°F (will be a little cooler by the end). This plus the jolt of heat from browning is just about right for beef.

Polyester is a plastic, just like nylon. It can be made into fibers and threads, or just about anything else. My guess is that these aren't meant for for use in the oven. They look like they're for assembly and presentation. I don't think you're likely to melt them and ruin the food, but they might get discolored and warped and and a bit on the crisp side. Maybe the manufacturer can clarify?

No one has said that fake vanilla is better than real vanilla. They're pointing to cooking circumstances that destroy any differentiation between the two. In those circumstances, it makes sense to use whatever's cheapest. If there's a significant price difference.

As Deputy Field Marshal of the Public Ridicule Division of the Logic Brigade of the Secret Steak Police, I feel the need to weigh in here. It has not been my experience that a well-marbled but tender cut (like rib eye) stays sufficiently juicy and tender when cooked well-done. But it has been my experience that people often disagree on the levels of doneness and what to call them, so it's possible we're talking apples and oranges. What temperature are you cooking to? Among the factors that influence perceived juiciness (actual juice, collagen rendered to gelatin, and rendered fat) I believe fat to be a distant 3rd place in importance. It makes a difference, but I don't believe fat can rescue tender meat that's cooked to 170°F. The juices are gone, there's no gelatin, and much of the fat rendered from the marbling is gone as well. I believe it will be subjectively juicier than a a well-done lean steak, but that's saying very little. Sadly, there is much more flavor in the juices themselves than there is in the contracted, dried out muscle fibers that remain. I find that good steaks lose flavor along with texture with extended cooking. Which really speaks to Anthony Bourdain's point, if you go back and read what he says. In his experience, people who order steak well-done will not be able to tell the difference between a good piece of meat and crappy one. So he and his fellow chefs are thankful for the well-done crowd: they have someone to give the butt-end, gristly, less appealing butchery leftovers to, without fear of the steak coming back to the kitchen. And this is where the advice that's often perceived as condescending comes from: don't bother with an expensive piece of meat if you're going to cook it well-done. You're just going to be killing the qualities that made it an expensive piece of meat in the first place. This isn't calling anyone a barbarian for liking the well-done meat. It's imploring them to see it as an opportunity to save money. You see the same dynamics with coffee beans; once they're roasted past medium you can't taste the original bean anymore. Only the roast. So the roasters don't generally bother mentioning the plantation or country of origin of their Vienna roasts. It's irrelevant (and seeing this as a profit opportunity, Starbucks made a fortune convincing people to drink dark roasts. It let them buy cheap-ass coffee). Same story with extra virgin olive oil. If you're going to sauté with it, you're wasting your money. Once cooked in a frying pan, it's going to be no better than a grade that was extracted with heat.

I can imagine being tempted by fake vanilla flavor if it weren't so cheap and easy to make your own extract. It's more expensive now than in past years, due to a vanilla shortage, but still, I think you can make a pint of extract with around $10 worth of grade-b beans and $5 worth of bottom-shelf vodka. I bought my vanilla bean stash for a fraction of this, but still, this gives you extract for less than $1 an ounce. A little less than low-grade extract; way less than the good stuff. I'm not shy with it. I'd agree that you lose all but a hint of it in anything that spends much time in the oven. But a lot of flavor sticks around in things that cook quickly (pancakes, etc.). It's actually pretty easy to overdo it.

We just need a potion that can turn pink meat gray without changing the flavor. It would resolve so many epicure-barbarian standoffs.

Ahh, sorry. I read that wrong. That doesn't sound as bad. I still suspect a little acid would be a big improvement.

Looks like a recipe that needs work. It's a mild cut of meat with a milk and cream sauce, seasoned just with onion. The most obvious fix would be adding an acid. This could be some tart white wine to deglaze the pan (reduce it a lot before adding the other liquids) or just some sherry vinegar stirred in at the end. That said, a cream sauce on tenderloin seems a bit pallid and unappealing. I understand the desire to add some richness, but suspect that if you got both richness and flavor from the sauce, the meat would just disappear. I like to tart up tenderloins with a relatively lean and bright sauce. Something with acidic fruit or chutney or reduced stock or wine / vinegar—bright flavors that act more as a condiment that complement. Tenderloin needs some kind of accent.

Time must be a factor as well, since I got off flavors in 90 minutes at 85C.

Searzall?

I see a lot of cooks at NYC delis using their cheap serrated knives for absolutely everything. These guys are usually really fast and efficient at what they do. I think they use the sandwich knife because that's what they're given, and because doing everything with one knife is quickest. But I wouldn't follow their example unless working at a deli. As far as "there are ways to use a serrated knife besides sawing," yeah, if by sawing you mean cutting back and forth. But the knife will always cut like a saw ... which is to say, it will tend to rip, rather than separate the food cleanly. This is a simplification ... under a microscope, you you'd see that all knives rip. But serrated knives do it on a macro scale that causes more damage to the food.

I wonder if the noxious compounds are broken down under such prolonged cooking. Why else 7 hours? They'll be soft after 1 or 2. If I knew the science behind this, it would be easier to come up with cooking methods that avoid the problem. Re: onions ... I haven't gotten bad flavors cooking them sous vide. But I do cut down on all the usual mirepoix veggies in preparations like stocks, by as much as 2/3. I find s.v. cooking amplifies their contribution relative to other ingredients. Carrots especially.

A lot of people use serrated knives on tomatoes. There are even some serrated utility knives marketed as 'tomato knives.' I'd argue that it's a bad practice, because serrated knives chew up delicate foods like tomatoes. You won't get a clean cut. The practice lingers because you can easily cut a tomato with a dull serrated knife, but not with a dull smooth knife. And most people's knives are in a permanent state of dullness. Serrations are a crutch that lets you get away with this. But anyone who cares enough to learn cutting techniques should also learn to sharpen. If you have even halfway sharp unserrated knives, you'll cut a tomato more cleanly than you will with serrated ones.

Didn't they say they were going to open source the API, so that anyone could write software for it? I would expect that software development isn't what Anova does best.

I wouldn't trust anyone who uses a serrated knife for anything besides bread and cake. There isn't much technique to cutting these things. Just don't apply cutting pressure when you're changing directions, and you should get a clean cut. The only thing hard about serrated knives is sharpening them.

For what it's worth, the time I got the bad flavor was vegetables only (mostly celeriac and fennel), cooked at 85°C for 90 minutes.

I kinda sorta like the idea, but not at the going price—was it $11?? The claim that they'll last 3000 uses seems dubious. Silicone stuff rips pretty easily with rough treatment. If they came down to a couple of bucks each, so you could have dozen of them around in a few sizes, and expect them to last a year or two or three, I'd be tempted.

Just make sure there aren't any hermetically sealed parts that could explode ...

In fairness to the Times, wasn't this my recommendation? I made some pork chops last night, but had some thick-ish ones ... about 1-1/4". Cooked sv at 57C, then seared. Possibly because of leanness, these cuts seem to cook through unusually fast when searing. And these were relatively well-marbled as loin chops go. From a nice farm upstate. What I saw in my finished chops wasn't so much an even, overcooked layer around the outside, but that they simply overcooked in the places where the chops were thinner, like under 1/2". They were pretty unevenly cut. In the thick parts, they cooked well, without much gradient. This is something I haven't noticed before. One thing I do with a lot of proteins, but especially with pork and fish, is treat the outside with an alkali to get it to brown faster. My favorite secret sauce is a 1:5 blend of baking soda and dextrose. You can sprinkle it on or disperse in oil and brush it on. It helps you get a nice crust very quickly. But even with this help, I was surprised how quickly the thinner parts cooked through.

Interesting, thanks. How do you find the difference between garlic powder and sauteed garlic (I assume you're just talking about sweating the garlic a bit)?